Face my fears, at least one per month.

Happy New Year, everyone! In 2016 I have read a total of 33 books out of my 30 books challenge. I’m so glad with the number, and I’m planning to step my game up in 2016. This is my second post about a yearly Wrap Up post in survey which was originally created by Andi @ Andi’s ABCs and Brittany @ The Book Addict’s Guide.

This survey is all about the facts and details behind what I read and not necessarily favorites and reflecting. These statistics are all the books that I read in 2016 (not books necessarily published in 2016).

You’d think a common enemy would have forced us to set aside our differences and band together against the escalating threat. We turned away the stranger, the outsider, the unrecognized face. Rick Yancey — The Last Star

Each week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite covers with that characteristic. If you want to join in and share your 5 favorite covers with the weeks particular characteristic, then just make a post, grab the meme picture (or make your own) and leave your URL in Linky (so we can visit).(Hosted by Sugar & Snark)

#5

From New York Times bestselling author Jennifer A. Nielsen comes a stunning thriller about a girl who must escape to freedom after the Berlin Wall divides her family between east and west.

With the rise of the Berlin Wall, twelve-year-old Gerta finds her family divided overnight. She, her mother, and her brother Fritz live on the eastern side, controlled by the Soviets. Her father and middle brother, who had gone west in search of work, cannot return home. Gerta knows it is dangerous to watch the wall, to think forbidden thoughts of freedom, yet she can’t help herself. She sees the East German soldiers with their guns trained on their own citizens; she, her family, her neighbors and friends are prisoners in their own city.

But one day, while on her way to school, Gerta spots her father on a viewing platform on the western side, pantomiming a peculiar dance. Then, when she receives a mysterious drawing, Gerta puts two and two together and concludes that her father wants Gerta and Fritz to tunnel beneath the wall, out of East Berlin. However, if they are caught, the consequences will be deadly. No one can be trusted. Will Gerta and her family find their way to freedom?

#4

The romantic companion to My Life Next Door—great for fans of Sarah Dessen and Jenny Han.

Tim Mason was The Boy Most Likely To find the liquor cabinet blindfolded, need a liver transplant, and drive his car into a house

Alice Garrett was The Girl Most Likely To . . . well, not date her little brother’s baggage-burdened best friend, for starters.

For Tim, it wouldn’t be smart to fall for Alice. For Alice, nothing could be scarier than falling for Tim. But Tim has never been known for making the smart choice, and Alice is starting to wonder if the “smart” choice is always the right one. When these two crash into each other, they crash hard.

Told in Tim’s and Alice’s distinctive, disarming, entirely compelling voices, this novel is for readers of The Spectacular Now, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, and Paper Towns.

#3

This isn’t the story of a shattered girl who meets a broken boy and together they fix each other and live happily ever after.
This is a story of the girl you went to school with. A story about the boy you know from down the block.

It’s beautiful and messy. It’s happy and devestating. It’s blissful and soul crushing. But it’s their story and it’s real.

The quiet girl with the wild hair has captured Javier’s attention for so long. He isn’t about to let another day go by without at least knowing her name. The timing is bad, the circumstances less than ideal but he just wants to say hello and see her smile up close and then he will let her go. He has to let her go. What he doesn’t know is that there is no way he can walk away after meeting her.

Selfishly he pursues her and begins a beautiful love affair knowing that there is only one way it can all end. Javier is keeping a secret that is just as devastating to him as it would be to her. Abigail knows there is something he is hiding but for once in her life she defies her logic and pushes her worries to the back burner. She wants to stay blissfully happy and ignorant to reality.

As much as he tries he can only keep his secret for so long. Once Abigail knows the heart shattering truth can she stay with him and accept their fate or does she have to protect herself and walk away from the most epic love she has ever known?

#2

What if the world holds more dangers—and more wonders—than we have ever known? And what if there is more than one world? From Heather Dixon, author of the acclaimed Entwined, comes a brilliantly conceived adventure that sweeps us from the inner workings of our souls to the far reaches of our imaginations.

Jonathan is perfectly ordinary. But then—as every good adventure begins—the king swoops into port, and Jonathan and his father are enlisted to find the cure to a deadly plague. Jonathan discovers that he’s a prodigy at working with a new chemical called fantillium, which creates shared hallucinations—or illusions. And just like that, Jonathan is knocked off his path. Through richly developed parallel worlds, vivid action, a healthy dose of humor, and gorgeous writing, Heather Dixon spins a story that calls to mind The Night Circus and Pixar movies, but is wholly its own.

#1

Years ago, Kahlen was rescued from drowning by the Ocean. To repay her debt, she has served as a Siren ever since, using her voice to lure countless strangers to their deaths. Though a single word from Kahlen can kill, she can’t resist spending her days on land, watching ordinary people and longing for the day when she will be able to speak and laugh and live freely among them again.

Kahlen is resigned to finishing her sentence in solitude…until she meets Akinli. Handsome, caring, and kind, Akinli is everything Kahlen ever dreamed of. And though she can’t talk to him, they soon forge a connection neither of them can deny…and Kahlen doesn’t want to.

Falling in love with a human breaks all the Ocean’s rules, and if the Ocean discovers Kahlen’s feelings, she’ll be forced to leave Akinli for good. But for the first time in a lifetime of following the rules, Kahlen is determined to follow her heart.

FRIDAY FINDS showcases the books you ‘found’ and added to your To Be Read (TBR) list… whether you found them online, or in a bookstore, or in the library — wherever! (they aren’t necessarily books you purchased).

Each week we will post a characteristic and choose 5 of our favorite covers with that characteristic. If you want to join in and share your 5 favorite covers with the weeks particular characteristic, then just make a post, grab the meme picture (or make your own) and leave your URL in Linky (so we can visit).(Hosted by Sugar & Snark)

Today’s Cover Characteristic: Moon

#5

The first great war of Ovira is over and the most hated king in centuries is dead, but his nephew still lives. However, Basen had nothing to do with the destructive war his uncle started. In fact, it was his uncle who exiled him and his father to the territory of their enemies, where Basen’s dreams of becoming a legendary mage now fade as he must work all day just to eat. His only chance at regaining some semblance of the life he thought he would lead is to join an elite school that trains, houses, and feeds a thousand new young men and women each year. But little does Basen know that his determination will put him at the center of a war even bloodier than the one he’d barely managed to avoid.

#4

When Luke Manchett’s estranged father dies unexpectedly, he leaves his son a dark inheritance: a Host of eight unique, powerful, and restless spirits. Unfortunately, Luke has no clue how to manage them, which the ghosts figure out pretty quickly. Armed with only his father’s indecipherable notes and a locked copy of The Book of Eight, Luke struggles to adapt to his new role as a necromancer. Meanwhile, the increasingly belligerent Host mutinies, possesses Luke’s mother, and forces him out of his own house.

Halloween, the night when ghosts reach the height of their power, is fast approaching, and Luke knows his Host is planning something far more trick than treat. With the help of school outcast Elza Moss, who knows a bit about ghosts herself, Luke has just thirteen days to uncover the closely guarded secrets of black magic and send his unquiet spirits to their eternal rest.

And if you thought it was going to be easy, you’d be dead wrong.

#3

Phaet Theta has lived her whole life in a colony on the Moon. She’s barely spoken since her father died in an accident nine years ago. She cultivates the plants in Greenhouse 22, lets her best friend talk for her, and stays off the government’s radar.

Then her mother is arrested.

The only way to save her younger siblings from the degrading Shelter is by enlisting in the Militia, the faceless army that polices the Lunar bases and protects them from attacks by desperate Earth dwellers. Training is brutal, but it’s where Phaet forms an uneasy but meaningful alliance with the preternaturally accomplished Wes, a fellow outsider.

Rank high, save her siblings, free her mom: that’s the plan. Until Phaet’s logically ordered world begins to crumble…

Suspenseful, intelligent, and hauntingly prescient, Dove Arising stands on the shoulders of our greatest tales of the future to tell a story that is all too relevant today.

#2

When young thief Scarlett Steel is suddenly attacked by a creature of metal and flesh she is saved by a mysterious group of warriors called the Wachens. Soon Scarlett is swept away on an adventure to an underground city known as Hollow’s Creek, where she discovers her past and learns about her connection to the evil Cyborg Master, Ikeis—a connection feared by the High Council. She must learn to control her impulses towards the curious blue crystals, the only source of power in the Lowlands—and forbidden to women. She sets out on a quest, deep in the danger-filled underground world in search of her kidnapped friend Draven.

Along the way she must find within herself the power to set right a terrible evil, face the unimaginable and sacrifice all—risk her own life to save another.

#1

Told in diary form by an irresistible heroine, this playful and perceptive novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the May Bird trilogy sparkles with science, myth, magic, and the strange beauty of the everyday marvels we sometimes forget to notice.

Spirited, restless Gracie Lockwood has lived in Cliffden, Maine, her whole life. She’s a typical girl in an atypical world: one where sasquatches helped to win the Civil War, where dragons glide over Route 1 on their way south for the winter (sometimes burning down a T.J. Maxx or an Applebee’s along the way), where giants hide in caves near LA and mermaids hunt along the beaches, and where Dark Clouds come for people when they die.

To Gracie it’s all pretty ho-hum…until a Cloud comes looking for her little brother Sam, turning her small-town life upside down. Determined to protect Sam against all odds, her parents pack the family into a used Winnebago and set out on an epic search for a safe place that most people say doesn’t exist: The Extraordinary World. It’s rumored to lie at the ends of the earth, and no one has ever made it there and lived to tell the tale. To reach it, the Lockwoods will have to learn to believe in each other—and to trust that the world holds more possibilities than they’ve ever imagined.